Thursday September 26 Pentecost 18
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Psalm 85
Trust that God will save us, despite what we have done, and will fill us with plenty and fill the land with justice.
Psalm 86
O God, you have been so generous to me, I trust you, and ask you to uphold me when I am attacked.
Esther 7.1-10 What’s Esther about?
At the banquet Esther asks the pagan king, her husband, for freedom for her people, and reveals that Haman has plotted their genocide. The king has Haman hung on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.
This affirmation of Jews by a pagan ruler would have been immensely encouraging for the Jews who read these tales and suffered under Greek and Roman oppression. In those kinds of oppression they were in danger of both annihilation and of assimilation. The story of Queen Esther provided hope for surviving both those threats.
Luke 4.14-30 What’s Luke about?
Immediately after Jesus refuses the temptations to use oppression to control the world, he returns to his home and claims to be the prophet of justice named by Isaiah. At first he is applauded but when Jesus says that God’s justice implies that the people of Israel have no special status above other cultures because that would be unjust, his own people turn against him and attempt to kill him.
In Luke’s understanding, the Romans are potential allies for the early Christians and he uses this introductory story to foreshadow the whole of Jesus’ life—his commitment to God’s justice will bring him into ultimate conflict with his own people.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth,
and ourselves in your image.
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and to serve you with reverence and thanksgiving;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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